Mega Man
Mega Man, known as Rockman (Japanese: ロックマン Hepburn: Rokkuman) in Japan, is the title character and the protagonist of the Mega Man series by Capcom.1 He was created by Akira Kitamura for the first Mega Man game released in 1987, with artist Keiji Inafune providing detailed character artwork based on Kitamura's pixel art design. Mega Man has become one of Capcom's mascots, one of the company's primary original characters, and continues to be one of the video game industry's most recognizable icons.3 Having appeared on many consoles since the Nintendo Entertainment System, Mega Man has had a wide gaming audience. Mega Man's fictional universe can be divided into seven categories, each featuring different variations and incarnations of a robot boy hero. Although "Mega Man", or "Rockman", is usually the name for the original Mega Man from the classic series, it can also be theMega Man series of fictional works, or the group of adherently named main characters within. The several spin-off series that have emerged over the past years, each one continuing the Mega Man mythos in some unique way, includes but is not limited to the Mega Man X, Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Battle Network, and Mega Man Star Force series. A resulting animated serieswas also produced originally in Japan as well as a number of toys, comics, and collectables available both in and outside Japan. Mega Man's role in the original story was to be an assistant to his creator Dr. Light. When Light's colleague goes mad, Dr. Light repurposes Mega Man to battle the mad scientist Dr. Wily and his ever-growing army of robots, and stop them from taking over the planet by using their own special abilities against them. Utilizing his Mega Buster arm cannon and his ability to copy the special weapons of the boss robots he defeats, Mega Man must travel the world and traverse harsh environments in order to bring Wily's menace to an end. With the help of his creator Dr. Light and his assorted cybernetic companions, Mega Man's eventual goal is to one day achieve "everlasting peace" for both humans and robots.5 Conception and design Although originally the names "Mighty Kid", "Knuckle Kid", and "Rainbow Battle Kid" were proposed, Capcom eventually settled on "Rockman" as Mega Man's Japanese moniker. The word "Rock" in Rockman is a reference to the music genre rock and roll, and is meant to work in tandem with his sister robot, Roll. However, Capcom Consumer Products Division president Joe Morici changed the name from Rockman to Mega Man because he felt "The title was horrible."6 In addition, the original Mega Man titles intentionally incorporated a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" gameplay mechanic into defeating certain enemies.37 The pixel art for the character was created by the designer of the original game in the series, Akira Kitamura (credited under the pseudonym "A.K"),8 and later turned into a refined illustration by Keiji Inafune.2910 Kitamura originally intended Mega Man to be colored white, but instead settled on blue to make his animations more clear. Mega Man's design had a lot of little influences from various manga, anime, and tokusatsu shows, specifically Ninja Captor.11 During a special event at TGS 2007, Inafune commented on the creation of Mega Man. "I'm often called the father of Mega Man, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom," he explained. "My mentor (Capcom senior member Akira Kitamura), who was the designer of the original Mega Man, had a basic concept of what Mega Man was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him. I didn't get to completely design a Mega Man protagonist from scratch until Zero (Mega Man X, SNES). Back when the SNES was coming out, I was asked to give Mega Man a redesign, so I created this character. But I realized that this design wouldn't be accepted as Mega Man, so I had another designer create the new Mega Man, and I worked on Zero to release him as the 'other main character' that would steal all the good scenes!"9 The team decided to incorporate anime elements for the game's animation. Inafune explained, "Man's hand transforms into a gun and you can actually see it come out of his arm. We wanted to make sure that the animation and the motion was realistic and actually made sense. So with Mega Man, we had this perfect blending of game character with animation ideas."12 Across the series Mega Man was given new skills to add more variety to the gameplay. For Mega Man 6, after having implemented so many different mechanics to the gameplay of past entries, Inafune thought that Rush adapter assembly was inevitable. The artist struggled with the adaptor designs and ultimately found them to be unrealistic. According to Inafune, "If you think about it, they shouldn't be able to combine like this. It would be awkward if parts of Rush like his neck were left over after they combined, so what was I supposed to do?"13 In the cover of the North American copies, Mega Man's appearance greatly differs from his original one. Veteran video game cover illustrator Marc Ericksen painted the North American box art of''Mega Man 2'', which included Mega Man firing a pistol instead of his trademark Mega Buster. Ericksen explained, "I didn't know anything about Mega Man, and looking at the character in action I said to the art director, 'What is he shooting with?' ... He said, 'Well, he must have a pistol, because I don't see a rifle.' ... I said, 'So, a pistol? Do you want me to do a pistol?' And he said, 'Yeah, let's put a pistol in there.' So I did what I was told and I put the pistol in there. Add to the fact that they only had, like, a day and a half for me to do the painting and what you wound up with was not the greatest result. But certainly a result that was not my fault. I mean, they told me to put the pistol in his hand!" Category:Male Category:Males Category:Robots Category:Camcom Character Category:SMBX Characters Category:Camcom Meme Category:SMBX